A very generic JRPG with not a whole lot going for it. It seems like a valiant effort at creating a JRPG experience, but fails in most regards.

Visually, I am not a fan. I realize this is originally a 2016 game, but even then I would have considered these character models ugly and stiff. Sometimes the game's environments are pleasant to look at despite this, but the lack of enemy variety and very lackluster spell and ability animations don't help in this regard.

The combat UI is also needlessly complicated. Rather than giving us a simple ability list like JRPGs have done for ages, they opted for a four-way directional system. You have to press one of your controller's face buttons to select an ability, then press the same one again to confirm it. As a result, you can only see four abilities at a time. The game limits you to 8 per stance, but most characters can't even fill up these 8 slots, and the ones that can only do so because they get upgraded versions of the old ones (i.e. Fire vs Fire+). It's serviceable, but I don't understand why we had to reinvent a worse wheel.

Speaking of combat, there are a number of things I dislike. Many abilities are just the same thing in a different flavor. One character's main abilities are literally just different elements of essentially the same attack. Each character has two stances, but this frequently feels like a useless mechanic. To change stances, you have to give up an ENTIRE TURN to do so. While there is a talent you can use to reduce the time penalty of changing stances, it doesn't help enough to make it feel worth it. The healer, for example, has a standard healer stance and a buff stance. I barely used the buff stance because wasting two entire turns to change into it and then change back when I needed to heal was too dangerous to do in fights that actually mattered and the fights that didn't matter were too short to bother. If you played Sea of Stars and hated how few abilities were in the game, you will dislike Earthlock even more.

Character balance also seems terrible. There is one character whose intended role seems to be a tank and a support damage dealer. The only problem is her tank role is often completely useless in boss fights because bosses are taunt immune, which her entire tank stance revolves around. Even in standard fights her tank stance feels useless because it's counter attack based, but only works against physical attacks that come from grounded foes. If the foe uses an spell, ranged attack, or melee attacks while flying, she can't counterattack or the counterattack simply misses. In fact, the two "tank" characters are probably the worst in the game, offering terrible damage and very little ability to actually tank. One offers some decent buffs, but the game never seemed to require its use.

The best part about the game are its bosses, but they feel more like a puzzle you have to trial and error. You will encounter one shot mechanics that can only be solved by having a specific character in your party, sometimes with specific talents equipped. If you didn't bring that character, you're SOL and have to restart the fight.

If you've read other reviews, you've probably read about the game's quick travel system, which can be done through save points. I'll echo these sentiments that the warp system needed to be streamlined. In order to warp somewhere, you first have to warp back to your base then warp to the destination you want. I'm not sure why this extra step was needed.

Finally, the story and characters are so generic, they feel like the cliff notes of a fully fleshed out RPG. Hell, the "big bad" doesn't even reveal itself until the very end where its appearance and ultimate demise is over in the blink of an eye. Filled with tropes you have seen hundreds of times, Earthlock does little to stand out.

Save your money and time. There are TONS of JRPGs out there to play, and this one is not worth your time.